


Imperfect Vice

by Walor



Series: Jailhouse Rock [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Dick is still very Sassy, Hurt/Comfort, More relationships to be added later - Freeform, Multi, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Welcome to Blackgate, Rape Aftermath, Threats of Violence, Violence, more tags to be added later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:06:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23223739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walor/pseuds/Walor
Summary: It's been five months, three days, and seven hours since Jason watched the imposing, gray walls of Blackgate fade into the distance of a rogue police car. He's been in hiding ever since. Waiting for the day the police called off their search to resume his life as a gang enforcer with a lot of bark and bite.At least, that's what Bruce Wayne seems to think. Jason's done with organized crime and would rather spend the rest of his days in hiding, away from the man that left him terrified of the shadows that creep too long after sunset. He doesn't want to be thrown back into a game he lost and abandoned four years ago.However, Dick Grayson still isn't any good at following Jason's rules.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Series: Jailhouse Rock [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1669519
Comments: 5
Kudos: 122





	Imperfect Vice

**Author's Note:**

> A little nibble of the long ride ahead.

During the middle of the night, half-past three, snow blankets New Jersey in sheets of fresh white powder. It’s the first snow of the winter, approximately three days after December 26th, Boxing Day, closing people in their homes with several feet. Getting outside is an impossibility without climbing over the piles blocking every front and back door. The sky’s a cool grey-blue, and the wind blowing through the streets that morning Northeast from Canada is bitterly cold. It breaks off the last stubborn leaves from the trees, last remnants of fall gone. Their skeletal branches gather heaps of cascading snowfall, icicles forming as quickly as the snowflakes melt against the bark.    
  
He knows, even before looking out the window and seeing the city streets, winter’s finally arrived from the ache that kept him up a little before two that morning. In fact, he’s still lying in bed, tucked beneath several blankets, shivering from the lack of heat as his muscles ache with every shudder and tremble.   
  
It’s even worse than his few months in Blackgate’s hospital wing. At least there the hospital had heated rooms and blankets for the inmates confined inside its walls. Which has to be the oddest thought he’s ever had in his entire life. That he’d ever miss something about Blackgate at all. Clearly, he’s going slowly insane the longer he’s forced to stare at the cracking ceiling of his new residence. Not that he has much of a choice. He’s traded bars and handcuffs for a crumbling apartment he can never leave. Awesome.   
  
Speaking of, it’s probably about time he lets everyone hear the rest of his complaints. It takes several minutes of hesitating to pull his hands out of the comforting warmth. The cool air in his room turns his hands pink damn near instantly the moment his fingers slip free. Bitches and curses to himself as he pushes himself up, bracing already for the oncoming shiver.   
  
As he does, the bed creaks almost as loudly as his bones do. A common occurrence as of late, as chronic pain tends to do when the weather changes.  _ God, I sound like an old man.  _ _  
_ _  
_ Beyond the small space of his bed is a dresser, bright white, most likely from IKEA, that matches his stark white nightstand, bed frames, and the chair in the corner of the room. The floor is the only differing color, a shaggy, mute brown with a number of faded stains that lead from the door to the bedside. Jason can make out the trademark track of a boot in some of the more prominent stains. Size 9, Timberlands with someone who favored stepping toes first rather than the ball of their foot. Not exactly the most charming thing to step on first thing after bed.   
  
What did he say? Slowly going insane here.   
  
Not that he could think any different with the bland, white furniture in the room. His cell had more color. Everything from the muted green privacy sheets to the different colors of gray that made up the bars on his hospital bed and restraints. Almost prefers the standard prison gray, especially when all he has to look at every hour of every day is all this  _ damn white.  _ _  
_ _  
_ A little knock on the door forces him to temporarily forget his plight. Looks up, still adjusting in bed to watch the door slip open as the guest slips inside. Jason’s eyes meet bright, vivid blue and he relaxes, partially at least, against the headboard.    
  
Dick gives him a crooked half-smile, one corner of his mouth curved up as he looks up and down Jason’s form. Hair combed back and styled, he already has a little bit of frostbite on his nose and cheeks, a slight pink with quickly melting snowflakes adorning his hair. He’s wearing a thick coat, the fur-lined collar that cradles his neck and jaw and Jason stupidly reaffirms to himself how much better Dick looks out of Blackgate orange.    
  
Not that he looked bad in it--could probably get away with a burlap sack--it’s just nice to see Dick in his natural state. Free.   
  
“Still in bed?” Dick looks over Jason, who’s still curled up halfway under the blankets. “I thought you’d have been up by now celebrating.”   
  
“How do you know I’m not celebrating right now? Maybe I’m doing invisible jazz hands under the blanket, smart guy.”   
  
Dick laughs that stupid, musical laugh of his. Jason’s stared plenty of times over the last several days, weeks, months when Dick laughs. Watches the way his eyes crinkle up at the corners, blue eyes dazzling and bright, sometimes he even catches a glimpse of an eye roll. It makes Jason’s heart stop and start in sudden, painful beats. He’s handsome and pretty, and that fact hasn’t changed much. If anything, it’s gotten even more frighteningly apparent now that Jason has time to take every aspect of him in.    
  
That’s before he turns his face, the left side open and unobstructed, the thick white line of a scar running down from his cheekbone to a curve around his chin. Jason has to look away, old guilt tugging at his heart.   
  
“Come on, it’s nearly afternoon already. You’re not going to spend your first day off ‘house arrest’ indoors. Bruce wants to talk with you.”   
  
Oh.    
  
Jason sinks a little further into the bed. It’s hard to ignore the pressing urge to bury himself back under the covers and sleep the awkward fear away. Not that this fear is shared by Dick. If anything, he turns to look back out the door into the main room, smiling brightly at wherever Bruce lies beyond. If Jason knows Bruce, and he does a little too well for his liking, the guy’s probably inspecting the fireplace for layers of dust or the expanding collection of cobwebs.    
  
Hopes he is. Jason’s rather proud of his ability to annoy even at the expense of his own horrible perfectionism.   
  
Listen, he’s grateful, beyond grateful for all the things Bruce has done. God knows where he’d be without Bruce’s help. That being said, there’s a lot of unanswered questions Jason’s only let fester for the last few months he’s been on his own. Given his track record of making deals with not-so-nice men that turn around and bite him in the ass, sometimes literally, he thinks he’s rather nice with being silently cynical. If he’s going to be extremely honest, and given that lying hasn’t helped him too much in the past, the fact he didn’t pack up and run the moment Bruce first left him alone is, well, a little stupid on his part.    
  
Not many men are willing to hang around a city only 25 miles outside of the town that contains the prison that destroyed his life, after all.   
  
Dick, the right brat, doesn’t let him go back to bed and hide. He’s at Jason’s dresser, rifling through his assortment of clothes to find what he deems respectable for Bruce’s eyes. He plucks out several of his red pull-overs and dumps them onto the filthy carpet. Jason snorts and glances back at Dick, who finally finds his maroon, heavy jacket folded at the bottom of the drawer.    
  
“Maybe I don’t want to talk to him.” Dick tosses the jacket at him. Or, more accurately, at his face. Jason pulls it down with a scowl at the same time Dick switches gears to start sorting through his underwear. “Get out of there.”   
  
“If you’re not going to get up and stop me,” Dick pulls out a pair of briefs Jason bought on a whim. Kind of regrets that now, no matter how alluring the soft cotton was. The grin on Dick’s face as he holds up the underwear dotted with a repeating pattern of fat tigers makes his cheeks burn. “Oh,  _ Jason _ .”   
  
“Okay, okay, I’m up. Get out of my room.”   
  
Even with vertigo that comes shoving himself off the bed too fast, Jason suffers through it long enough to shoo Dick out of his room. That terrible, musical laughter echoes off the living room walls and underneath the bottom of the door. Jason holds the door shut and waits for nausea and dizziness to pass all while his cheeks burn. Can hear Dick’s voice from deeper in his small apartment when his senses finally return to him, accompanied by Bruce’s rolling timber. His heart  _ aches. _   
  
Glares at the chipping paint on the door and thumps his head against it with a pathetic little sigh.    
  
He’s fucked. Well and truly fucked.    


* * *

It takes another few minutes to change, all with stiff, careful movements, and emerge from his room. During that time, Bruce has decided to make himself at home in Jason’s little kitchenette. Now, normally having his shit touched and messed with, down to which slices of bread Bruce puts in the toaster, would evoke a very territorial response. In Blackgate, if you didn’t take what you needed or were extremely possessive over it--think a street dog with a food bowl--it was always taken away. Could have been anything. From the pillows in your cell right down to the rights of your body.    
  
Jason remembers that rule particularly well. However, considering everything in his apartment, even his “freedom” has been bought and paid for by Bruce, that’s a little more complicated. If Bruce wanted to set his apartment on fire and make Jason live in Crime Alley, that was well within his right. There is nothing he could do otherwise.   
  
Bruce isn’t like that. Out of kindness or some manipulative bullshit, Jason has yet to completely figure out, he’s not sure. Bruce, for whatever reason, has been kind. The apartment Jason’s been living in for the past several months, while small and falling apart, is better than his hospital room in Blackgate. He’d take the freedom this place affords him over Blackgate’s definition of a “medical wing” any day of the week. Which is part of the reason why Jason’s so on edge, he guesses.    
  
If he doesn’t play nice with Bruce, all of this might just go away.   
  
Jason leans against the open doorway into the kitchen, watching Bruce quietly open his cupboards, shifting through the small collection of glass mugs he has. Pulls down a few and sets them on the counter, three all various shapes, and colors. As he does that his other hand opens his drawers to reach the silverware, methodically taking out three knives to lie on the counter along with each mug. Repeats the motions to grab three paper plates as the toaster pops with three slices of bread, one partially burned.    
  
In the living room, which is hardly more than three steps away from the kitchenette, Dick’s stretched out on the couch. He’s since abandoned his jacket, tossed it over the back of the couch and flips through channels without bothering to let the television play for longer than several seconds. Jason catches a few words here and there depending on whatever channel Dick lands on. Most of them are mid-morning infomercials that drone on with the same bored host that sounds one second closer to losing their mind on live television. If he recalls correctly, the same awful “feature-length” commercials were Blackgate’s only constant form of entertainment on a daily basis.    
  
“Jason,” Bruce finally says after a moment. He flicks his eyes up, refocusing on Bruce’s solid form. “We need to talk.”   
  
He looks so different now. Jason only knew Bruce as Malone the correctional officer. He had sported a terrible pencil mustache and wore his hair slicked back with enough grease it shone even when it was lights out. As Bruce, there was no awful mustache, no greasy hair or match constantly rolling between his teeth. He’s sophisticated in a way that still makes Jason, even with the changes he’s made to be a better member of society, cringe. He reeks of old-money Gothamite in the way he holds himself with rod-straight posture. Glares down the bridge of his nose with his stone-cold eyes when he talks to anyone like he’s just that much better than them.    
  
Jason would go so far to say that if he still had a gang if he wasn’t so keen on not getting noticed or winding up in Blackgate again, he’d be the type of guy Jason would mug just based on appearance. Wouldn’t even take anything either, just do it for the fact he was above everyone else.   
  
But he isn’t the leader of the Red Hoods anymore. Isn’t much of a leader or criminal at all, really. The only thing that remains is a hint of his old tattoo buried beneath the white scar tissue on the center of his chest. Jason can’t remember the last time he looked at himself naked either. If only to keep himself from seeing the mutilated skin on the center of his chest.    
  
Bruce clears his throat. Jason blinks and the kitchen comes back into focus. Bruce looks at him, eyes level with his mouth pressed in a thin, straight line.   
  
“Are you alright?”   
  
Jason nods and grunts out a reply. Shame licks hot down his neck and settles in the pit of his stomach. “Yeah, 'm fine.”   
  
His answer doesn’t satisfy Bruce, not hard to see that with the rigid line of his shoulders. His eyes look over him while Jason shifts on his feet, a scowl finding its way onto his face. Can’t stand the way they look at him, the way they see him now. Hard to remember a time someone didn’t approach him with a tentativeness or wariness, that he was a second away from shattering.    
  
“If you’re sure-”   
  
“I am sure.” Jason slips into the kitchen and takes one of the mugs Bruce left on the counter. Steps around Bruce’s large form to grab the handle of the small fridge, popping it open to take out his carton of water. “Might as well spill it, what you’re here for. Dick said you needed to talk to me.”   
  
Bruce simply turns his head to regard him over his shoulder. He watches Jason pour some water into the glass and drain it in a few large gulps. “The GCPD officially called off the search for you this morning.”   
  
“Is that why you came all the way here? To tell me what I’ve been constantly watching the calendar for?” Jason refills the mug and puts the water carton back inside the fridge.    
  
Now it’s Bruce’s turn to look annoyed. Jason doesn’t mean to take pleasure in provoking negative reactions from Bruce, it just happens to go hand in hand with his willingness to continually ruin his own life. He’s very good at that.    
  
“No,” Bruce says, a little harder. “It’s to remind you that even though you’re no longer an active case for the Gotham police department, it doesn’t mean that no one will recognize you. This is the most likely time for you to be caught and brought back to Blackgate. Especially given your condition.”   
  
Now it’s Jason’s turn to be quietly offended. Glaring at Bruce as he slips back out of the kitchen, away from its tight corners where he feels more or less trapped by Bruce’s bigger body. “I didn’t realize I was suddenly incapable of going anywhere. Am I getting a babysitter next too?”   
  
“That’s not it, Jason,” Dick chimes up from the living room. He’s sitting up, arm thrown over the couch, casual and relaxed. Jason’s mood whips hard enough he nearly loses his footing, frown quickly falling off his face with an embarrassed little duck of his head.   
  
With no protest, Dick keeps talking. “We don’t think you need a babysitter. Your seizures are controlled well enough by your medication, you’ve been doing well on your own here since I drove you out of Blackgate. What Bruce means to say is, no one’s going to forget your face anytime soon. Even before they started broadcasting it on the news every morning and night, you were among Gotham’s most infamous residents. That kind of...status doesn’t just go away over a few years. Lucky if it goes away at all.”   
  
Jason glances at Bruce while Dick speaks. His face doesn’t change much, save for the slightest twitch of his brow as Dick explains. For whatever reason, Dick trusts Bruce, for more than he ever seemed to do Jason.  _ Of course, who would blame him after what you’ve done? _ _  
_ _  
_ A moment passes between all of them, quiet and long, before Dick sighs and stands up from the couch. “You’re going to have to get some of your tattoos removed, maybe even a haircut or a change in hair color.”   
  
Jason snorts, glaring into his glass at his reflection in the water. “Yeah, that’s not happening.”   
  
“Do you want to be able to go outside again, or are you having more fun being locked up inside your new cell?” Dick walks around the side of the couch. Jason wilts against the kitchen wall the closer he gets, looking anywhere he can but Dick’s perfectly plush mouth. “Because I know it drives me insane.”   
  
“Well that’s your problem,” Jason protests, voice soft and eyes focusing on the little crack in the drywall just over his right ear. “I don’t see why I have to go out where people would recognize me at all.”   
  
“Because,” Dick says, “you and I owe Bruce for a lot more than just getting us out of prison.”   
  
Right. This is the problem with owing debts to people that expect a lot when it’s time to cash in on their favors. Getting into bed with Bruce Wayne was supposed to be a one time deal when Jason had made the arrangements to get Dick as far from Blackgate as possible. Didn’t expect Dick to come back a few years later to return the owed favor. Not that Jason isn’t appreciative. But life in Blackgate’s medical wing of the prison was a lot simpler of an existence.    
  
It was nice, in that almost school-course-life sort of way. Jason had done rather well with it.    
  
_ I didn’t ask for your help or your kindness,  _ Jason flicks his eyes back to meet Dick’s deep and understanding blue. He hates himself for shying away to focus instead on a stray thread from Dick’s collar.    
  
“I know what you want from me. I can’t give it to you. I told you as much when you tried to get me out the first time.” Jason looks over at Bruce. “My feelings on this haven’t changed.”   
  
Bruce regards him quietly. It only takes a moment before Jason is squirming with a deep frown forming on his face as Bruce’s eyes strip him bare to the very marrow of his bones. He always thought Slade was the scariest man he ever met. Clearly, he didn’t know what he was thinking. Too young to know just how many other sharks were swimming in the ocean beneath him.   
  
“I understand.” Bruce slips his hand into his coat pocket. When he withdraws it, he holds a small thumb drive, which he sets on the kitchen table. “What happened to you, to Dick, was an abomination of justice. There are no words I can offer you that express the depth of my sympathy for your situation.”   
  
“Here comes the but,” Jason crosses his arms over his chest. “You don’t have to drag your feet to get to the point, Bruce. I don’t need a persuasive essay on why I need to change my mind.”   
  
Bruce’s lips fall into a thin, grim line. “Thomas Wayne Jr. is a megalomaniac that funds nearly the entirety of Gotham’s organized crime. Men like Slade Wilson and Lyle Bolton are the reason they have the power they do, Thomas is the one footing the bill in return for their cruelty. He encourages it. The fact that he’s now the city’s mayor will only give them more opportunities.”    
  
Jason barks out a strained, painful laugh. The gall of this man is damn near ridiculous in the worst way he could imagine. It’s almost, no, it  _ is  _ comical how genuine Bruce’s voice can be repeating such a rehearsed lie. It drives into his chest sharp as a knife, twisting around his soft, vulnerable lungs until his laugh chokes off into a desperate wheeze.   
  
“If I had any doubts you were from a family with a history in politics, you just pulverized them.” Jason sucks in a pained breath. “Don’t lie to my face like an asshole. You want Thomas gone for personal reasons. Either be plain with me or you can take all the help you’ve given me and stuff it.”   
  
“Jason-” Dick hisses.   
  
“Oh fuck off, Dick. So high and mighty now. What the hell kind of speech did he give you to make you so thirsty for his attention?”   
  
“What is the matter with you?” Dick steps closer to Jason. He steps back, further against the wall and shrinks. Jason looks down at that thread again as Dick invades what little space he has left. “Look at me, Jason.”   
  
He has an urge to. A desperate urge that tugs at his chest to flick his eyes up and look at Dick’s clearly for the first time since they drove out of Blackgate together. It lasts for a long, painful moment before Jason shoves it down and cuts it off. Slams the door to his mind shut and lets it suffocate in the dark corner of his mind.   
  
“Jason,” Dick says, a little softer. “Jason, come on, look at me.”   
  
That’s unfair. Jason grits his teeth and pushes Dick back, shoving himself away from the wall. Takes another couple steps back, so his back is facing the hallway rather than a corner he can get trapped in. Dick stumbles from the force of it, a little wince on his face that tears Jason’s aching heart further in two.    
  
“I get it, alright.” Jason looks at Bruce. “He stole what you had and you want it back. Maybe there is a part of you that wants to help people and dethroning your brother from the family fortune is the way to do it.”   
  
Bruce tilts his head. “I hear a but coming.”   
  
Jason shrugs his shoulders, a little half-smile on his face. “I’m not the man you want anymore. I don’t… Not that I don’t think that pretty little lie is something nice, I do. I respect that. But you need to understand, that I like how boring my life got after half a year of torture. I liked the routine physical therapy and the sessions with my psychiatrist. It wasn’t what I wanted, but stability was never something I had.”   
  
Barbara had been kind to him. As deputy warden, she had taken a special interest in his case and the abuse that had occurred under Bolton’s provocation and Joseph’s willful ignorance. Rectifying it had been a legal battle that Barbara had been stonewalled constantly from until Jason had finally agreed to speak about the humiliation he had put others through before he had turned it on himself.    
  
Somewhere inside him, he knows he still struggles with his passivity. Growing up had been difficult enough without getting into the details of how his life had changed within a gang he controlled. The crimes he committed himself that had him sent to Blackgate in the first place. People change. More so than others in his case.   
  
“I had that, at least for a while. I have it now. I don’t want to lose that just because you’re guilting me into owing you for something I didn’t ask for.”   
  
“Jason,” the way Dick looks at him has the same force as a slap to the face. Seeing Dick in person is always difficult, but there is something to be said when Dick looks at him like  _ this.  _ A concerned frown on his face, reaching out for Jason with a soft and gentle hand that nearly makes him spring back several feet.    
  
“So you’ve said your pieces. Thanks for dropping in, but I’m going to have to say no thanks. A big no fucking thanks.”   
  
Jason turns around and heads back down the hallway to his bedroom. Behind him, he hears Dick call out his name that grows in pitch and desperation the further he gets into the hall. It’s all he can do not to open the bedroom door and slam it shut behind him. Covering his ears the moment he’s out of eyesight and forcing himself to take slow and steady breaths as his heart pounds in his chest.    


* * *

The thumb drive sits on the kitchen table long into the night.  
  
Jason ignores it, well, mostly. If he was really dead-set on it he should have opened his window and thrown it out the moment he got the chance. Maybe, if he was feeling particularly vicious as he was this morning, he would have slipped it inside the sink drain and turned on the disposal. Just to hear the blades chip and stall as it destroyed the little bit of plastic and circuit board of what was inside it.  
  
As it stands, Jason leaves it where it sits on the kitchen table. A little black square that stands out against the softer-colored wood table it’s atop. Jason doesn’t move it when he cleans the apartment after Dick and Bruce leave. Simply wipes around it when cleaning down the table, or, more pathetically, keeping his back to it while washing the dishes. Even with his first day of freedom, he remains completely locked inside. Joints stiff and painful from the cold winter air, he sets a fire around late afternoon and tends to it throughout his idle cleaning.   
  
Eventually, every inch of the apartment swept and cleaned three times through, Jason sits on the couch and stares at the blank television screen.   
  
“You don’t need to do anything,” he mutters to himself. “This isn’t your problem anymore.”  
  
_Good job. You sound so convincing. Where’s your Oscar nomination?_ _  
__  
_ …  
  
He’s so stupid.   
  
Growling, Jason shoves himself up from the couch and walks past the kitchen, into the hallway to the separate master bathroom at the opposite end of the hall. Some hot water and a clean body will clear his head well enough. That’s the idea, at least. Used to work all the time when he was a kid feeling sick or run-down. Should work just as well with the encompassing feeling of restlessness from stubborn guilt of having to owe a favor.   
  
That’s not him anymore. Nope. Owed favors who? Wrong number. He certainly doesn’t need to give a man that broke him out of prison against his wishes anything. That was beyond his control. This, on the other hand, is. He can say who he jumps for and how high now. There’s nothing holding him back or propelling him forward anymore. No more gang, no more Slade, no more Dick.   
  
No more Dick Grayson. That’s for sure. Their relationship was, and always had been, one of necessity inside Blackgate. Now that its walls are a whole other city away, Jason shouldn’t even see him anymore.   
  
He has a lot of nightmares. Can only imagine how many of Dick’s he stars in.   
  
“Get it together, Todd, for fuck’s sake.”  
  
Jason presses the palm of his hands to his eyes and breathes for a moment. Long and slow, calming the growing erratic beat in his chest. Around him, the bathroom walls are small for a master, a little too close for comfort, but stable, solid walls. No bars, no concrete, just ugly, tan drywall. No stink of sea salt air, or the stench of sweaty bodies in a too-tight space. Just the faint scent of vanilla from his bar of soap sitting in dried suds on the counter. _I am here. I am home._  
  
With a deep breath, Jason lets his hands drop to his sides and grip the bottom of his sweatshirt. Pulls it over his head and lets it drop to the floor. In the mirror, out of the corner of his eye, Jason sees his reflection mimicking his action. He does not look at himself. Nor does he look down at his chest where the white, scarred skin stretches over his muscle. Never does.   
  
_The smell of burning flesh heavy in his nose, the rumbling laugh behind the misshapen lips of a sadistic smile._ _  
_  
The screech of the shower ring bars drowns out the laughter. He turns the knob all the way to scalding and then lowers it bit by bit before stepping beneath the spray. The shower is long and nice. Warm water cascading down his skin and bringing relief to his cold, aching joints. Steam clears out his nose and the phantom sting of seawater, leaving him clear-headed and limp the longer he remains underneath the showerhead. Enough to wash away the inklings of guilt that start to fester in the back of his mind.   
  
“Stop it,” Jason mumbles, water dripping into his mouth. “You don’t owe either of them anything. Not anymore.”  
  
He did what he promised. Got Dick out like he said and gave Bruce the help he wanted to pursue his “totally innocent” ulterior motives. The apartment, busting him out of Blackgate, that was all done in their own free time. No verbal agreement, no contract, no nothing. He’s got to keep telling himself that. Jason hates owing people favors.   
  
Stepping out of the shower shocks him awake a little more. The apartment’s still cold and the steam has crept out beneath the space under the door. Pats himself off, starting with his legs, up to his back, stomach, and-  
  
Avoiding the mirror doesn’t do much, not when Jason has to look down at the extent of the damage on his chest. It hurts still. Not very often, not as much as it did the first couple months after he’d gotten it. It’s almost completely faded now, nothing but silvery matches of white scar tissue, some areas more gnarled and ugly than others. It takes up the entirety of his sternum and massive portions of his pectorals on either side. Looking down at it makes it hard to see the design, but Jason can make out the grooves and edges where the cast-iron pressed harder and further down than others.   
  
The jagged teeth of the skull meet the off-tone portions of his skin grafts and Jason drops his towel to throw up in the toilet.   


* * *

It’s dark. The lights in the apartment aren’t on, Jason hasn’t moved to do so, having stood still for the last hour staring at the flash drive on the kitchen table. Hair wet and neck cold from the droplets that slid down his skin, Jason keeps his arms tucked into his jacket pockets, staring at the tiny piece of plastic.   
  
“This is Pandora’s fucking box,” he says after another few long minutes of silence. “Don’t. You know you don’t want to.”  
  
The sun disappeared past the city line about half an hour ago. The haze of the neon-bright skyline had stretched with the shadows during late sunset, illuminating the room in a soft glow of reds, greens, pinks, and purples. It was a much better view than the high-barred walls that overlooked the gray, swirling tides at the prison. When he was a kid, he slept underneath that bright sheen when he wanted to get away from the insanity at home. As the leader of the Red Hoods, he had slept in a king-sized bed facing the bright white W of Wayne Enterprises. This view, here, now, is precious to him.   
  
Funny, how things change.   
  
He can’t watch that tape. Can already map out the reaction to it in his brain, still vibrating from the suffocating panic that overwhelmed him in the bathroom. Seeing whatever Bruce has planted on it will inevitably flick on the light in the storage room of his memory bank where therapy has pushed most the last five years into the back of his mind. Stored and locked in careful little boxes he hasn’t opened since he woke up to Bruce looking over him.   
  
Absence of thought, memory loss, is a cherished gift. Something he has clearly taken for granted, now that he is being forced to confront the sins he thought he abandoned in Blackgate’s vast walls. There will be no going back. Not ever.   
  
Jason picks up the little thumb drive. Small, near-weightless for the amount of danger it holds inside.   
  
Setting it up in his laptop hardly takes anytime at all. Jason curls up in the corner of his couch, laptop resting on top of his knees, thumb drive plugged into the side, the little file appearing along the side near his other documents. Innocuous, a simple little icon nestled inside his computer’s data innocently waiting.   
  
When he opens it, there are three named files, one means nothing to him. The name is foreign, Jason cannot place its meaning so he ignores it for the time being. The second one is Thomas Wayne Jr. Bruce’s asshole brother.   
  
The third, Jason stares at for a long minute. _Sionis._   
  
He opens it. A barrage of photographs and news clippings, all minimized and sitting in perfect lines, take up the entirety of the screen. Many are bathed in gorey red. Others show dead eyes, glazed over and buzzed out belonging to children no older than eight.   
  
Three hours pass. Jason memorizes every face. Every name.   
  
At five minutes to three in the morning, Jason picks up his phone. Dials the number and it rings only once the end of the line picks up.  
  
“Jason,” Bruce’s voice filters through. He lets out a shaky breath.   
  
“I have a condition,” Jason walks to the window. Beyond him, the neon lights blink and glitter above the high-rises, advertising all-night casinos, and billboards with the latest shows. “Or I disappear and you never hear from me again.”  
  
“Anything,” in the distance, below the static, Jason hears Dick’s faint laugh trickle over the phone.  
  
“Roman Sionis dies.”   
  



End file.
